By Nicole Garneau, PhD

Day 2 Recap

I woke up to the sounds of "Bell Tower" through my phone's
alarm clock, and could not for the life of me understand why my
husband hasn't hadn't hit snooze already, "but wait!" I realized
groggily, "I'm in Florida, not in Denver, that must be the alarm I
set last night." In a sleep induced haze I grabbed for my phone,
dropped it inadvertantly behind the hotel bed (while it was still
tolling away), finally got a handle of it and hit snooze.

Despite all this, I made it to breakfast by 7:45 am, filled up
my neon green Denver Museum of Nature & Science travel mug with
copious amounts of coffee and found a table to join. I had a great
conversation with the folks at breakfast about how professional
societies are taking a stab at social media, about Body Worlds,
about anatomy, and about how to keep memberships in professional
societies consistent year to year. There was also talk of scuba
diving and sun catching, proof that there is life outside the
lab.

OK, so what did I learn today?

1. Meghan did an incredible job presenting this morning:

2. A group from Monell has made a transgenetics mouse (they put
one gene, called T1R3 from humans into mice that do not have the
mouse T1R3) that has the ability to "taste" sweet like a human
would taste sweet- making a great model for studying behavoir and
other aspects of taste.

3. The difference between habituation and adaptation.
"Habituation is when the brain still gets a signal, but doesn't
care. Adaption is when the sensory cells no longer send a signal to
the brain." Dr. Yanina Pepino explained. She presented research
showing that obese and lean women do not have a difference in the
initial pleasantness or intensity of sweet foods, but lean women
habituate to the pleasantness more quickly than obese women, and so
stop eating earlier.